Target your discussions!

Hot improvements storm has also reached the Discussions module. Like with the Files module we have done some work in response to your comments. In projects with heated discussions people were receiving hundreds of notification e-mails. That was basically to keep everyone informed on what is happening in the project.

Many of you, however wanted to have more control over notifications originating from new discussion posts. Especially when a discussion’s subject does not require your attention or involvement.

Now, when starting a new discussion you can decide who should be notified and subscribed to the topic. How to do it? Try starting a new discussion.

Discussion recipients

There are two new links below the text area (one of them is actually old but it has been reworked a bit).

By default, each new discussion is delivered to all project members.

By clicking on that link you will unfold a list of all users assigned to the project, where you can select who is going to receive notifications from this topic.

Users can of course opt-out from all discussion notifications, such users’ names will be faded, you won’t be able to select them, even if you would like them to participate.

If you click on the link to fold the list, it will just show the number of recipients and indicate that only selected group will receive notifications and not simply everyone with notifications enabled.

Unsubscribe from Discussions

In a situation when you have not initiated a discussion you can always subscribe when you would like to be in the loop and unsubscribe if your role in the discussion comes to an end. However, if your notification settings for discussions are off, you won’t be able to subscribe unless you enable discussion notifications.

The list of people who receive notifications is saved with each post so that it is clear who received an e-mail when a particular reply was posted. The list will change if anyone subscribes or unsubscribes from the discussion. The older posts, however, will retain information who received notification when they were posted.

It helps in monitoring who was and who currently is following the topic. The author of the thread can not unsubscribe and will always receive notifications from their on discussions – unless they switch them off completely.